Messier Marathon 1999

This year 1999, March New Moon will occur on March 17.8, giving the best opportunity for a Messier Marathon weekend on March 20 and a secondary chance on March 13, 1999. As the second-best chance occurs first, one may be well adviced to take this one also, or of course any date during the week if possible. At least near the second (better) date, there will be a good chance to see all 110 Messier objects in one night for observers between 20 and 40 degrees Northern latitude. This year, there will be a considerably good chance to combine the Messier marathon with an all-planet marathon, i.e. you can observe all solar-system planets during this night. While no spectacularly bright comet and - up to now - no considerable supernova was detected to be present at this time as in former years, four cometsbrighter than magnitude 13 are visible, accordint to the JPL List of Currently Visible Comets:
Comet				RA (2000.0) Dec		RA (2000.0) Dec		mag
				March 13, 1999		March 20, 1999

C/1998 M5 (LINEAR) 20:04 +87:29.0 07:39 +87:19.8 9.6 C/1998 P1 (Williams) 07 48.87 +41 59.3 07 38.37 +42 03.8 12.6 C/1998 U5 (LINEAR) 21 02.68 +14 00.8 21 01.01 +14 14.1 12.2 P/1998 U3 (Jager) 06 39.25 +22 13.9 06 44.97 +21 18.7 10.8
Also, meteors from various showers may occur, and depending on your location, you may be able to observe the International Space Station, ISS or the Russian Space Station Mir.

Messier Marathon Events 1999

The following Messier Marathon Events have been announced: Late Additions! Please email me any further scheduled events for inclusion here.

If you have undertaken, or participated in, a Messier Marathon, 1999 or earlier, if not already done so, please email me your or your group's results, or the link to your results page, for inclusion in our Messier Marathon Results page!


Marathon Home

Hartmut Frommert (spider@seds.org)
Christine Kronberg (smil@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)

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Last Modification: 3 Mar 1999, 11:00 MET